Jennifer's Body
Encyclopedia
Jennifer's Body is a 2009 black comedy
horror film
written by Diablo Cody
and directed by Karyn Kusama
. The film stars Megan Fox
, Amanda Seyfried
, Johnny Simmons
, and Adam Brody
. Fox portrays a newly-possessed
teenage serial killer
specializing in killing her male classmates as her best friend strives to stop her. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival
and was released in the United States and Canada on September 18, 2009. The title is a reference to the song of the same name by Hole
on their album Live Through This
. As a tie-in
to the film, Boom! Studios
produced a Jennifer's Body graphic novel
, released in August 2009.
Working with Cody again following their collaborative efforts on the film Juno
, Jason Reitman
stated he and his producers "want to make unusual films". Cody said she wanted the film to speak to female empowerment and explore the complex relationships between best friends.
The film had a disappointing performance at the North American box office
, making $2.8 million its opening day and $6.8 million its opening weekend, and received mixed reviews from critics; where negative reviews classified the film as lacking the intensity needed for "true horror" and desperate to be a cult classic
, positive reviews praised the film for its "occasionally clever" and often witty dialogue combined with "fun performances" and emotional resonance.
), once an insecure teenager, is now a violent mental inmate who starts the story as a flashback
while in solitary confinement
. Needy and popular cheerleader Jennifer Check (Megan Fox
) have been best friends since childhood, despite having little in common. One night, Jennifer takes Needy to a local dive bar
to attend a concert by indie rock
band Low Shoulder. A suspicious fire engulfs the bar, killing several spectators, and Jennifer is taken by the band despite Needy's attempts to stop her. Later that evening, Jennifer, covered in blood, appears in Needy's kitchen and proceeds to eat food from the refrigerator. Unable to digest the matter, she vomits a trail of black, spiny fluid and then leaves in a hurry as Needy calls after her.
The next morning at school, Jennifer appears fine and shrugs off the concerns of Needy. While the small town is devastated by the numerous deaths caused by the fire, Jennifer seduces the school's football captain in the woods naked and then attacks him, where his disemboweled corpse is later found. Meanwhile, Low Shoulder gains popularity due to their rumored heroism during the fire and offers to make a charity appearance at the school's spring formal. Low Shoulder's song "Through the Trees" had become the town's unofficial anthem and the newly released single would donate 3% of the profits to the people who lost loved ones in the fire.
A month later, Jennifer is beginning to look pale and accepts a date with school goth/punk
Colin (Kyle Gallner
), whom she brutally kills that night. While Needy and her boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons
), engage in sex, Needy senses something dreadful has happened. She leaves in a panic and almost runs over Jennifer, covered in blood. She rushes home and finds Jennifer in her bedroom who makes out with her and soon explains what happened after the fire: Low Shoulder took her into the woods, and offered her as a virgin
sacrifice
to Satan
in exchange for fame and fortune. However, although the sacrifice and greedy exchange were a success, Jennifer was not a virgin, and when the lead singer Nikolai (Adam Brody
) murdered her, a demon
ic spirit took over her body
. It is revealed then that Jennifer knew she needed human flesh and blood to survive. In addition to the known murdered townspeople, Jennifer also encountered the exchange student, Ahmet, after the fire and upon hearing that no one knew he had survived, she took him into the woods and ate him, making him her first victim.
The next day at school, as the town is stunned by Colin's death, Needy goes to the school library's occult
section and surmises that Jennifer is a succubus
; she is weakest when she is hungry, and must eat flesh in order to sustain her life and appearance. Needy tells Chip about her discoveries and warns him not to attend the dance. He does not believe her and she subsequently breaks up with him in order to protect him.
Chip goes to the dance, hoping to meet with Needy, but he is intercepted by Jennifer, who seduces him and takes him to an abandoned pool house. Needy arrives there and finds Jennifer feeding on Chip. Needy tries to drown Jennifer and then helps Chip out of the pool. Jennifer, hovering in the air, attacks Needy but is later stabbed by Chip with a pool skimmer. Jennifer escapes while Needy watches her boyfriend die.
Needy then decides she must kill Jennifer. She goes to Jennifer's home and sees Jennifer lying on her bed picking out her next victims in her yearbook, and she crashes through the window and fights her with a boxcutter. Culminating with a stab to the heart, Needy finally destroys the demon and kills Jennifer. Jennifer's mother (Carrie Genzel) comes in and finds Needy with the utility knife on top of her daughter's body. Soon after, Needy is brought to an asylum. Since she was bitten by Jennifer, she has obtained some of Jennifer's supernatural powers. Set upon revenge for what was done to Jennifer and herself, she escapes the mental facility and hitchhikes a ride to the hotel where Low Shoulder are staying; she makes her way to their room and brutally murders them all.
was in negotiations to star as Jennifer Check since the film was announced in 2007, and was officially cast in October 2007. Fox said the reason she agreed to the role was her love for the script. "I think what I loved about the movie is it's so unapologetic and how completely inappropriate it is at all times", she said. "That was my favorite part about the script and about the character. It's fun to be able to say the shit that she got to say and get away with it and how people find it charming." Asked how acting in a film like this is different than acting in Transformers, Fox said "there's [no] distractions, like there's no robots to distract you from whatever performance I do give. So, if it's terrible, you're gonna fucking know that it's really terrible". She said despite this aspect of the business being intimidating, she enjoyed portraying the character. "I wasn't really sure what I was doing", said Fox. "I was just trying to have fun with it and I felt like I was able to make fun of my own image as to how some people might perceive Megan Fox to be. I was just sort of flying freely and I hope some of it works."
In balancing out the film's horror with humor, Fox said she relied heavily on Diablo Cody
's script and Karyn Kusama
's direction to pull it off. "I have a very specific sense of humor, things that I think are funny aren't going to fly with middle America", she stated. "It's going to eliminate some of the audience, so you need someone there to tell you you can't do that."
In February 2008, Amanda Seyfried
was cast as Anita "Needy" Lesnicki, the "plain Jane" best friend to Fox's character with whom she shares a somewhat lesbian
infatuation. Seyfried said it was a relief to play the nerdy character opposite Fox. "Being a lead (like Megan), you have that weird pressure of feeling like you have to look attractive", she stated. "In this movie, I didn't worry about any of that shit. I don't want to play the one that everybody is supposed to want to have sex with."
Chud.com reported that the filmmakers were looking at actual rock band members Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy
and Joel Madden
of Good Charlotte
to portray male lead Nikolai Wolf. Also considered was actor Chad Michael Murray
. In March 2008, actor Johnny Simmons
was reportedly cast as Nikolai. However, Adam Brody
was officially cast in the role of Nikolai, while Simmons was then given the role of Chip Dove. Brody said he did not do his own vocals. "My singing voice is still going through puberty", he said. "They gave me a singing lesson or two, and it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's not anything anyone would choose to hear."
Additional cast members include J. K. Simmons
as Mr. Wroblewski, Kyle Gallner
as Colin Gray, Amy Sedaris
as Toni Lesnicki, Cynthia Stevenson
as Mrs. Dove, Carrie Genzel as Mrs. Check, Juan Riedinger as Dirk, Chris Pratt
as Officer Roman Duda, Juno Ruddell as Officer Warzak, Keegan Sigurnjak as Meek School Nerd, Aman Johal
as Ahmet from India, Josh Emerson as Jonas Konelle and Lance Henriksen
as the driver near the end of film. A number of supporting and minor roles were filled by supporting and minor cast members from Jason Reitman
's previous films Thank You for Smoking and Juno
, including Simmons, Brody, Johal and Valerie Tian
.
. In October 2007, Fox Atomic
pre-emptively purchased the rights to Cody's script with Megan Fox to star. Peter Rice, who oversees Fox Searchlight
and Fox Atomic, brought in the project as Fox Searchlight had previously distributed Cody's film Juno. Mason Novick and Reitman's producing parter Dan Dubiecki signed as producers in November 2007 with plans to produce the film under Hard C, which is housed at Fox Searchlight. Reitman commented, "We want to make unusual films, and anything that turns a genre on its ear interests Dan and I." Karyn Kusama
was announced as director in January 2008. Kusama said she signed on to the project because of the script. "I was blessed to read this script at a moment where the producers were meeting with directors and it just knocked me out. It was just so original, so imaginative", she stated. "That's what it is about this script and the world is that it feels like a fairy tale
gone psycho and I think that's what most fairy tales actually started as." Additionally, Cody, Reitman and Kusama knew the film would be R rated because of the language.
In February 2008, a cease and desist was given to a writer at CC2K.us after they posted an advance script review for the film. The Latino Review also posted an advance review. At the time CC2K.us received their cease and desist order, questions were raised why Latino Review's largely positive script review was allowed to stay posted while CC2K was being forced by Fox Searchlight to remove their mainly negative coverage. Although Latino Review was later asked to remove their review, numerous other websites and blogs published their own critiques of the script.
Cody stated that when writing the script, she was "simultaneously trying to pay tribute to some of the conventions that we've already seen in horror, yet, at the same time, kind of turn them on their ear". One of her influences from the 1980s horror genre was the film The Lost Boys
. She wanted to "honor that, and at the same time, [she] had never really seen this particular subgenre done with girls and [she] tried to do a little of both". Despite this, she said she had noticed that "the last survivor standing in the typical horror film is a woman" and that because of this she feels "horror has always had kind of a feminist angle to it in a weird way and, at the same time, it's kind of delightfully exploitative". Jennifer's Body could play on both of these aspects.
Cody said she wanted the film to speak to female empowerment and explore the complex relationships between best friends. "(Director) Karyn Kusama and I are both outspoken feminists
", she said. "We wanted to subvert the classic horror model of women being terrorized. I want to write roles that service women. I want to tell stories from a female perspective. I want to create good parts for actresses where they're not just accessories to men." Addressing "the male-dominated" horror genre, Cody said "a key reason for writing the film was to bring to the screen a new way of expressing the intensity of female bonds" and that the adolescent female friendships she experienced were unparalleled in their intensity. She wanted to show the "almost horrific" aspect of such devotion and its relation to parasitism
.
The producers decided to have the film open with the statement "Hell is a teenage girl" to reflect the "horrors" of puberty
and that "the hellish emotions felt during high school often reappear as teenage girls mature into young women". Cody stated:
Cody crafted the story to follow a night that ends in a tragic fire, after which Jennifer is kidnapped and set up as a sacrifice which goes awry. Jennifer, now possessed by a demon and subsequently altered into a succubus
, sets out on a bloody rampage in which she devours boys, and it is up to Needy to stop her. In sort of a reversal aspect of how puberty changes a girl's life
, Jennifer must consume the blood of others once a month or she becomes weak and plain-looking. "It's a meek shall inherit the Earth sort of thing. I think it's always really satisfying and cathartic to see a character that was previously bullied become super human", said Cody. Cody said the script is not a reflection of any part of her own life, but that she is more like character Needy. "I would say I was more of a Needy than a Jennifer. I was never an Alpha female
, and I've never gotten off with bullying other people", she said. "If I had to choose, I was definitely the one being shoved, not the one shoving."
The nickname "Needy" was given to Seyfried's character to underline the essentially condescending dynamic in Jennifer and Needy's high school relationship, as Needy often admires Jennifer and feels she needs her. Cody said "Jennifer is a product of a culture that pressures girls to be skinny, beautiful and just like movie stars" and that she "hopes the film inspires girls to take life into their own hands and do with it, what they want". "If I had gone to this movie as a teenage girl, I would've come out of it feeling totally inspired", she stated. "I would've wanted to write, I would've wanted to create and I would've felt like I watched something that was speaking to me."
Assigned to direct the film, Kusama said, "I think also a lot of horror is about femaleness – whether it's Carrie or Rosemary's Baby
." She said she feels "like there's a lot of fear of the female or kind of celebration of it in some weird way and something about this movie managed to take the fear and the sense that it's the female that ultimately survives and sort of marry that in a really interesting way".
Addressing her decision to have Jennifer and Needy be romantically intimate at one point during the film, which takes place in the form of a long and passionate kissing scene, Cody said she did not write the scene to score publicity. Speaking of the scene's media hype, she said that "if the two protagonists of the film were a guy and a girl and in a particularly tense moment, they shared a kiss, no one would say it was gratuitous" but "the fact that they're women means it's some kind of stunt". The scene was "intended to be something profound and meaningful" to her and Kusama. She further stated:
Though the film is part comedy, Cody initially intended for it to be a "very dark, very brooding" traditional slasher film. Close to "a third of the way into the process" she felt that she was incapable of doing so because "the humor just kept sneaking in". She stated, "I have a macabre sense of humor. A lot of the things in the movie that are horrifying are funny to me." Feeling that "comedy films and horror films are kind of similar" due to being films where you can significantly gauge intense reactions from the audience, Cody stated, "They're laughing, they're screaming, it's not a passive experience. So, I actually think comedy and horror are kind of similar in that way."
Handling the film's special effect
s were KNB EFX GROUP and the Moving Picture Company
(MPC). For Jennifer's demonic form, the creators used different techniques. "I actually wasn't in [the makeup chair] that much because they created an entire head. They did a live cast of me from the shoulders up. They created me and then put the teeth in", stated Fox. "To save my face, they had a photo double that would come in and do most of the crazy monster makeup - they would do that on her. So it would go from me, then in post-production it would somehow go to her and the fake head. They would mix them all together."
For "the vomit scene" where Jennifer has just arrived at Needy's house after being murdered and inhabited by a demon, Fox said the liquid she was given to spit out "was actually ...chocolate syrup initially". "We did a few takes where I would just do this scream and sort of puke Hershey
's chocolate syrup. Scratch the Hershey's because I don't want to endorse that or anything", she stated. "And then, special effects did a rig that clamps onto my ear and you revisit it in the pool scene..." Fox said it "clips on. It goes around the back of my ear and then I bite down on it on the side of my face, like this, and it projectiles. It's a tube..."
Directing the scene, Kusama said it had a classic feel. Fox agreed, "Yeah, and it projects whatever that material was. I'm not sure. It was pretty intense. I think it was worse for [Seyfried] because she's the one that got puked on. I was the one doing the puking."
For more practical special effects on the set as opposed to CG
, Kusama said it "was a choice that we all sort of made organically". She said they appreciate "those kind of effects in older movies and [questions] sometimes how much more effective it is to use a ton of CG" and that they "always started with a practical effect and then moved forward from there to lay a groundwork of something that's actually physically, materially there". They found this to be more enjoyable.
Erik Nordby of KNB (known for his work on The Haunting in Connecticut
, which also features co-star Kyle Gallner
) stated, "We immediately went into pitch mode in January and spent a solid two weeks trying to not only bid the script but also collect as much reference material and stuff for the first client get together." He said the director and producers wanted an "old-school, hands-off, lo-fi approach to the visual effects" so that the horror elements would not overpower the storyline. Based on the script, MPC similarly came to the same conclusion and "provided a clear direction" for Nordby and his team. "At that point when we met with them, they had already met with KNB, who had already done up a stylized still of what, at the time, they were calling 'Evil Jennifer,'" he said. "There was a lot of info yet to come, but based on the script, Jennifer goes from very beautiful Megan Fox to a very ghoulish, succubus creature whose jaw distends half-way down her face." Nordby said the look was eventually toned down at the wishes of MPC. From there, KNB "produced some tests, grabbing a bunch of stills from [Fox] and [did their] work to indicate how that balance could exist between special effects and visual effects and still maintain a level of subtlety" and that "[MPC] responded really well".
The teams wanted to "maintain some sort of the Megan Fox allure" but said that it was "incredibly difficult because as soon as [they] warped her face in any direction, the shine kind of came off it". To combat this, they ended up focusing on anything below her nose, where they had the freedom to make things "as horrific as [they] needed to" and then above her nose, "[they] could manipulate it somewhat with warps and color correction in her eye sockets. So even at her worst, she had some of that sexiness throughout".
Nordby said most of the attention was devoted to Jennifer's face and that "very quickly in combination" with special effects and makeup, MPC thought up a five-station system for what Jennifer goes through. Nordby stated:
During testing, Nordby and the special effects teams realized that getting Fox in and out of the appliance used to create Jennifer's murderous jaw would be too time-consuming. To remedy this, they hired a photo double. "[E]very day (for about 10 days) she would sit in a chair with this full appliance on her and we would shoot this jaw, and then all [Fox] would have to do is the dentures", stated Nordby. He said that "when it came time to shoot any of these jaw moments, [Fox] would act out in rehearsal how she was going to attack her victim and [they would] fine tune that blocking so it was relatively locked". The camera accompanied them in the same way, as "it would roll and she would put her dentures in, and they would really distort her face" in a way that would produce a satisfying and nice side effect. Additionally, the team would have Fox wear contact lens
es and go through exactly the same motions as normal Jennifer. "But then I would shoot all the key poses that existed in whatever moves the digital double was doing, so that we had as much of that appliance in that lighting condition that we could get", said Nordby. "KNB also created a hairless but high detailed head of the stage five Jennifer that had an articulating jaw."
Nordby spent a significant amount of time shooting "the articulating jaw" scene because they had "ultimate control over how the light was hitting the head". He said, "This so-called jaw shot became a pivotal point, because for four months of the post, the filmmakers thought the film was getting too scary so MPC pulled back on the jaw and then they thought it wasn't scary enough." Because of this, "they pushed back and this jaw went back and forth quite a bit to help navigate where they wanted the tone on any given day". These different poses helped the two teams perfect the jaw scenes. "From a marketing point of view, from all the test screenings they did", said Norby, "there was a lot of work figuring out how to make this a scary film as well as a funny film." Since the team was on a small budget, they "relied more on skilled artists to think through shots rather than a brute force approach".
MPC additionally worked on the disappearing waterfall that serves as Jennifer's grave when she is killed at the beginning of the film. They transformed the mysterious waterfall into a whirlpool. "We came up with an approach that we thought would work because we had a lot of confidence in our water sims", stated Nordby. "The waterfall appears both as a day and night shot, so we had to integrate with the water. And the night shots play a pivotal role in the film, and we do a huge crane over." They could not lock it to a pan
or to a tilt and filming the shots was difficult due to the actual base of the waterfall being out of reach. Nordby said, "I eventually lowered down a shot — a ton of reference of the area because I knew we'd have to do some digi-matte work to recreate the basin that the whirlpool ends up in." They soon realized that there was an insufficient amount of churning and foam to read as real as the location. The CG Supervisor, Pete Dionne, presented a different idea. "He grabbed chunks of that river and tialing it so that it had a nice stretch of birds' eye point of view of the water that existed on the location in the lighting situation we were trying to match", stated Nordby. "And then he projected that onto a whirlpool of animated sprites
and had similar enough texture to the actual water that existed there, but pulled control into lighting it and could add depth mainly to the center of it." Dealing with "very shallow" water, the team had to take extra care when filming the scenes.
During the film's fire scene, Cody appears as a character in the barroom. "To me, I am afraid of fire and fire technics and all that stuff which is why I don't know why I asked to be in the bar scene because I've never exploded before", she said. She had asked to be set on fire. "That was me trying to conquer a fear. By the way, they would not allow me to do a full burn for insurance purposes, even though I argued that Burt Reynolds
had done it once", stated Cody. "But apparently he got really hurt, so they would not let me. To me, there's nothing more horrifying than being stuck in a claustrophobic space as it is burning down so, to me, it was more like tapping into a personal fear. That's not tough."
, specifically at Robert Burnaby Park near Cariboo Hill Secondary School. Some of the scenes, particularly those situated in a school setting, were filmed in local Vancouver
-area schools such as Vancouver Technical Secondary School
, Langley Secondary School
and University Hill Secondary School
.
Fox said that while filming her highly anticipated kissing scene with Seyfried that Seyfried was "extremely uncomfortable" but that she herself was not. "I feel much safer with girls, so I felt more comfortable kissing [Seyfried] than kissing any of the other people that I had to kiss", she said. Seyfried's uneasiness in the scene caused "giggling fits" between takes. Seyfried said that neither of them wanted to do the kiss because they felt it was just for promotional purposes. She agreed with Fox that she was uneasy about acting out the scene. "It was my first time doing a real kissing scene with a woman", she stated. "It is just weird. It is a woman. With a woman's smell — soft and floraly — and maybe the pheromone
s are different. Something about it felt uncomfortable for me."
reports 42% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based on 166 reviews, with an average
rating of 5.1/10, and a generally negative 35% approval rating from "top" critics based on 31 reviews. The site's consensus of opinion is that "Jennifer's Body features occasionally clever dialogue but the horror/comic premise fails to be either funny or scary enough to satisfy". At Metacritic
, which assigns a normalized
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film holds a mixed/average score of 47 based on 29 reviews, while IGN
gives the film 2.5 stars out of 5.
Film critic Roger Ebert
enjoyed the film, dubbing it a "Twilight
for boys" and saying "as a movie about a flesh-eating cheerleader, it's better than it has to be". He said that within Cody there is "the soul of an artist, and her screenplay brings to this material a certain edge, a kind of gleeful relish, that's uncompromising. This isn't your assembly-line teen horror thriller". Additionally, he complimented Fox as "[coming] through" in her portrayal and "play[ing] the role straight". He gave the film three out of four stars. Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail
gave the film three out of four stars as well. Peter Travers
of Rolling Stone
stated it is "Hot! Hot! Hot!" and that "Director Karyn Kusama is torn between duty to female empowerment and slasher convention". He credited Fox's portrayal as showing "a comic flair" that Transformers "never investigated". Tom Charity of CNN
said "[the] last time a horror flick tried for a distinctly female point of view the result was Twilight, which was more of a wan gothic romance than a chiller" and "Fox makes a convincing vixen, callously picking up victims whenever her luster begins to fade. It's not hard to imagine she can have anyone who takes her fancy". Charity credited the dialogue as "bitingly smart, funny teen-speak ...along with sharp pop culture references".
Mary Pols of Time
magazine called the film entertaining and reasoned "[t]here is a lot of intelligent camp here, and some sharply observed characterizations" and Cody and Kusama's "depiction of the ways in which women like Needy are willing to compromise themselves to indulge an ultimately less secure friend is spot-on". Dana Stevens of Slate
praised the film for being "luscious and powerful, sexy and scary, maddening at times, but impossible to stop watching" and a "wicked black comedy with unexpected emotional resonance, one of the most purely pleasurable movies of the year so far". Elle's
Karen Durbin said the film not only puts "a fresh spin on female-centric pop genres but also own[s] them outright" and is "rich with first-rate performances".
The Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez likened the film's "[effective exploitation] of the genre as a metaphor for adolescent
angst, female sexuality and the strange, sometimes corrosive bonds between girls who claim to be best friends" to Brian De Palma
's 1976 film Carrie. She applauded the film for being fearless when delving into the subject of teen sex
and for reversing the tradition/idea that only "bad girls have sex when they're 16 [and the] good ones — those who, like Needy, do their homework and are responsible — never slide past first base". Nick Pinkerton of Sci Fi Weekly called Fox and Seyfried's lesbian
kissing scene "the best close-up girl-girl liplock" since Cruel Intentions
, and A. O. Scott
of The New York Times
concluded "the movie deserves — and is likely to win — a devoted cult following, despite its flaws" and "[these flaws] are mitigated by a sensibility that mixes playful pop-culture ingenuity with a healthy shot of feminist anger".
Giving a partially negative review of the film was Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York, who said the "movie has a centerfold sheen to it — and some lesbianic soft-core flirtation to match — as its plot dives deeply into Twilight-esque heavy-melo meltdown in the last act" and that "Cody throws one too many losses at Needy; the screenwriter loses her satiric way about halfway through. But for a while, this has real fangs". Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post
said, "There's a certain kooky, kinky fun to be had with Jennifer's Body" but that "[a]dmittedly, this is the stuff of lurid adolescent distraction, not great cinema" and "is strictly a niche item but provides a goofy, campy bookend to Drag Me to Hell
on the B-movie
shelf. Watch it, forget it, move on". San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Hartlaub stated, "Enjoy the film for its witty dialogue and fun performances, but know that there isn't a single good scare. An episode of Murder, She Wrote
has more thrills." Hartlaub felt the film is not bad, is "almost always pleasing" and that Fox "proves that she has some [acting] range" but "the chances that it will be somebody else's pop culture reference 27 years from now are slim to none". Joe Neumaier of New York Daily News said, "Fox merely needs to look either vacant or evil, which the Transformers boy-toy does spookily well" but "[w]ords and story are still the lifeblood of a movie, and Jennifer's Body is filled like a Twinkie with half-fleshed-out ideas". Disagreeing with Fox's performance, Chicago Tribune
's Michael Phillips called Fox "a pretty bad actress" who "doesn't seem to get Cody's sense of humor. At all". He reasoned the "movie's partially redeemed by Seyfried, who makes her character more than a repository for audience sympathy" and "her make-out scene with Fox is handled with more suspense and care than anything else in the movie".
Michael Sragow of Baltimore Sun described the only "perfect aspect" of Jennifer's Body as being its title. "No one is going to like this movie for its brain", he said. Claudia Puig of USA Today
stated of the film, "Jennifer's Body is not as hot as you hope it would be". Where others praised the film's dialogue, MSNBC
's Alonso Duralde called the writing lazy and "[w]orse still, all of Cody's trademark pop-culture–infused dialogue stands out as artificial and precious". Jennifer's Body, he said, wants "so badly" to be a Heathers
-esque dark comedy, "but its shortcomings makes you appreciate why that earlier film was so great". Ty Burr
of The Boston Globe
also said the film wants to be like Heathers, and reminded him "a lot" of Heathers but the only scene in the film that "actually feels dangerous" is when the possessed Jennifer initiates a long and passionate kiss with Needy, which the film "very, very nervously backs away from" and that "Jennifer's Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre".
audience, particularly males aged 17 and older, while Cody hoped for a large female turnout, it earned a "disappointing" $2.8 million on its opening Friday and $6.8 million its opening weekend at the North American box office
; the film placed #5, while 3D
animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
placed #1 with $30.1 million. Produced for $16 million, Jennifer's Body did manage to attract the sizable female audience Cody wanted; 51% were female, with 70% of patrons under age 25. The film had been expected to benefit somewhat from its heavily marketed lesbian kissing scene between Fox and Seyfried, which, in addition to Fox being in the film, was thought to entice and successfully attract male viewers. IGN stated that such a scene is not as shocking as it was in past decades and cannot be expected to significantly pull in an audience. The film grossed $16,204,793 domestically and $15,351,268 in foreign sales, for a worldwide total of $31,556,061.
Box-office analysts and critics debated the film's underperformance. Analyst Jeff Bock, of Exhibitor Relations, reasoned the film underperformed at the box office due to two reasons; the first, he said, is the genre. Bock stated that Americans get horror and comedy, but with the idea "of those two things together in one place, people suddenly get very dumb". "The horror-comedy genre is the toughest sell in Hollywood", he said. He noted films Tremors
, Slither, Shaun of the Dead
, Eight Legged Freaks
and The Evil Dead series
, and said that while many of those are considered critical and business successes, "none of them have brought in the megabucks that a simple horror or comedy can." In addition, he labeled the Scream
franchise as more "straight-up horror" than comedy and stated Zombieland
s box office performance would determine the horror-comedy genre's current viability.
Despite other R-rated horror films having centered around teenagers, some such as Scream having been successful, Bock said the second reason Jennifer's Body underperformed at the box office is the R-rating, which he described as a "killer" for the film. He said the film is set in high school and "sounds like the perfect package for teens" but that "the R rating banned many teens from the theaters" and the studio was left with "an R-rated film marketed to whom, exactly?" Nicole Sperling of Entertainment Weekly
felt that it was a slow and disappointing weekend for the box office in general; 3D animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was steep competition, and with low box office performances by the Matt Damon
film The Informant! and Jennifer Aniston
film Love Happens, she concluded that this may support "the current hypothesis floating around Hollywood, that movie stars no longer matter" and that it takes more than a name to open a film. S.T. VanAirsdale of Movieline
echoed Sperling's sentiment about the weekend, as "some of the stinkiest high-profile openings in recent memory". He concluded five reasons for Jennifer's Bodys underperformance at the box office. The first, he said, is the distributor. "20th Century Fox
's genre wing, Fox Atomic
, had Jennifer's Body in the can by the time the mother ship shut it down last spring", he said. "Instead of offloading the film to Fox Searchlight, which nimbly maneuvered Diablo Cody's previous brainchild Juno to awards-season lucre in 2007, a decision was somehow reached to fill a gap in Big Fox's early fall slate with a gory" and "post-feminist horror romp starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried". VanAirsdale classified this as a "[b]ig mistake" and that "[y]ou'd have to go back to The Devil Wears Prada
to find an example of a Fox release that worked without a genuine male lead; you’d probably have to go back to Aliens
to find a genre example of such that they pulled off successfully." He named the second reason as the marketing:
VanAirsdale reasoned the release date and screening
as the third and fourth reasons; he said there was confusion about what day the film was going to debut in theatres, and that Toronto
is "a nation removed from the audience where the film's actual momentum had been accruing for at least a month" and that "this rarely works for early fall releases; not because news doesn’t travel, obviously, but because it peels away a layer of accessibility that accompanies New York and L.A. bows." The final reason, he attributed to the critics, despite the film having had support from himself and various other critics, agreeing with the sentiment that fusing horror and teen comedy confuses people. "Put them together... — especially in a semi-satirical fashion that turns the first genre's sex-and-death conventions on their heads — and you get a whole lot of dickheads sniping that Body didn’t do enough to adhere to convention." He mentioned Ty Burr
's review in particular, where Burr declared it as falling "into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre." VanAirsdale stated:
Hollywood.com box-office analyst and President Paul Dergarabedian said "the poor numbers don't mean Fox can't open a movie." "It may be a matter of just choosing the right projects for her", he told the Associated Press
. "She's trying to find a world beyond Transformers, and she will. She's young and has a lot of promise."
on August 25, 2009, and featured previously released music by various indie rock
and alternative rock
bands such as White Lies
, Florence + The Machine, Silversun Pickups
and Black Kids
.
It also features pop punk band All Time Low
and electropop singer Little Boots
.
In addition, the album features new songs from pop rock
artists such as Cobra Starship
and Panic! at the Disco
and Paramore
's singer Hayley Williams
.
The first single from the soundtrack is "New Perspective
" by Panic! at the Disco
.
The album received a 3 out of 5 review from Allmusic, who described the album as having "a slightly different spin, mixing indie with the more expected punk, emo, and metal". The BBC
wrote an unfavorable review of the album, stating that "This assortment of acts says nothing of its parent film, beyond the occasional reference to school days and nods to something nasty coming this way".
The ending sequence of the film itself features a song, "Violet
", from the album Live Through This
by Hole
. This same album also features a song entitled "Jennifer's Body". In total, the film features 22 songs, most of which are included on the soundtrack.
to the film, Boom! Studios
produced a Jennifer's Body graphic novel
. The novel expands on the film's universe and Jennifer's murders of the boys. It was written by Black Metal's Rick Spears
, with the first nine pages illustrated by Jim Mahfood
(Clerks). Two covers, in Fox's likeness, were designed; one for the direct market by Eric Jones (available only in comic specialty stores), and the other by Frank Cho
for the mass market focusing more on "hellish Jennifer stories" with art by Mahfood, Hack/Slash
's Tim Seely, DMZ's Nikki Cook, and Popgun's Ming Doyle. The novel was released in August 2009.
The novel features less of Jennifer than the film, but does capture her "going in for the kill" several times. It focuses heavily on following her soon-to-be victims and provides information on their personalities not elaborated on in the film so that readers can better conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered. The novel consists of four chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, with art provided for each by different artists. Each one follows a different boy and what is happening in his life just before Jennifer kills him.
On creating the story, Spears stated, "The best part for me as a writer was to show some events from the movie from a different point of view, sort of like Rashomon
for you Kurosawa
fans. And with comics we can get into the character's heads in a way that works well in comics and novels more so than in film." He stated, "...I was using the medium to change what we really know about these characters and twist around what we see in the movies. All the academics aside, it's also very funny and gore splattered."
Spears stated that while writing the stories, the film was still being made and he had not seen any of it at the time. He mainly learned about the characters through the script. "I got to read the screenplay. It was kinda crazy writing characters that were being changed on set and in the editing process. I had to bob and weave to keep up but that was all part of the fun", he said.
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
written by Diablo Cody
Diablo Cody
Brook Busey , better known by the pen name Diablo Cody, is an American screenwriter, writer, blogger, journalist, and author. She was first known for her candid chronicling of her year as a stripper in her Pussy Ranch blog and her 2006 memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper...
and directed by Karyn Kusama
Karyn Kusama
Karyn Kusama is an American film director and screenwriter.A graduate of New York University's film school, her début production Girlfight won both the Director's Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival...
. The film stars Megan Fox
Megan Fox
Megan Denise Fox is an American actress and model. She began her acting career in 2001 with several minor television and film roles, and played a regular role on Hope & Faith. In 2004, she launched her film career with a role in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen...
, Amanda Seyfried
Amanda Seyfried
Amanda Michelle Seyfried is an American actress, singer-songwriter and former child model. She began her career as a child model when she was 11, and at 15 began her career as an actress, starting off with uncredited roles and moving on to recurring roles on As the World Turns and All My...
, Johnny Simmons
Johnny Simmons
Johnny Simmons is an American actor.Simmons was born in Montgomery, Alabama and was raised in Dallas, Texas, where he attended Nathan Adams Elementary and T. C. Marsh Middle School. He is a 2005 graduate of W. T. White High School...
, and Adam Brody
Adam Brody
Adam Jared Brody is an American film and television actor and part time musician. He began his career in 1995, appearing on Gilmore Girls and other series, and subsequently came to fame for his role as Seth Cohen on The O.C. Brody later appeared in several film roles, including Mr. & Mrs...
. Fox portrays a newly-possessed
Demonic possession
Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of an individual by a malevolent supernatural being. Descriptions of demonic possessions often include erased memories or personalities, convulsions, “fits” and fainting as if one were dying...
teenage serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
specializing in killing her male classmates as her best friend strives to stop her. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival
2009 Toronto International Film Festival
The 34th annual Toronto International Film Festival, was held held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 10 and September 19, 2009. The opening night gala presented the Charles Darwin biography Creation...
and was released in the United States and Canada on September 18, 2009. The title is a reference to the song of the same name by Hole
Hole (band)
Hole is an American alternative rock band that originally formed in Los Angeles in 1989. The band is fronted by vocalist/songwriter and rhythm guitarist Courtney Love, who co-founded Hole with former songwriter/lead guitarist Eric Erlandson...
on their album Live Through This
Live Through This
Live Through This is the second studio album by American alternative rock band Hole. It was released by Geffen Records on April 12, 1994, just four days after frontwoman Courtney Love's husband, Kurt Cobain, was found dead in their home....
. As a tie-in
Tie-in
A tie-in is an authorized product based on a media property a company is releasing, such as a movie or video/DVD, computer game, video game, television program/television series, board game, web site, role-playing game or literary property...
to the film, Boom! Studios
Boom! Studios
BOOM! Studios is an American comic book company headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. The "BOOM!" in BOOM! Studios is always capitalized by the company.-History:BOOM! was founded June 22, 2005 with Zombie Tales #1....
produced a Jennifer's Body graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
, released in August 2009.
Working with Cody again following their collaborative efforts on the film Juno
Juno (film)
Juno is a 2007 comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Ellen Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting an unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Olivia Thirlby, J. K....
, Jason Reitman
Jason Reitman
Jason Reitman is a Canadian/American film director, screenwriter, and producer, best known for directing the films Thank You for Smoking , Juno , and Up in the Air . As of February 2, 2010, he has received three Academy Award nominations, two of which are for Best Director...
stated he and his producers "want to make unusual films". Cody said she wanted the film to speak to female empowerment and explore the complex relationships between best friends.
The film had a disappointing performance at the North American box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
, making $2.8 million its opening day and $6.8 million its opening weekend, and received mixed reviews from critics; where negative reviews classified the film as lacking the intensity needed for "true horror" and desperate to be a cult classic
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
, positive reviews praised the film for its "occasionally clever" and often witty dialogue combined with "fun performances" and emotional resonance.
Plot
Anita "Needy" Lesnicki (Amanda SeyfriedAmanda Seyfried
Amanda Michelle Seyfried is an American actress, singer-songwriter and former child model. She began her career as a child model when she was 11, and at 15 began her career as an actress, starting off with uncredited roles and moving on to recurring roles on As the World Turns and All My...
), once an insecure teenager, is now a violent mental inmate who starts the story as a flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
while in solitary confinement
Solitary confinement
Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
. Needy and popular cheerleader Jennifer Check (Megan Fox
Megan Fox
Megan Denise Fox is an American actress and model. She began her acting career in 2001 with several minor television and film roles, and played a regular role on Hope & Faith. In 2004, she launched her film career with a role in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen...
) have been best friends since childhood, despite having little in common. One night, Jennifer takes Needy to a local dive bar
Dive bar
A dive bar is a type of bar or pub. Dive bars generally have a relaxed and informal atmosphere—they are often referred to by local residents as "neighborhood bars," where people in the neighborhood gather to drink and socialize...
to attend a concert by indie rock
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
band Low Shoulder. A suspicious fire engulfs the bar, killing several spectators, and Jennifer is taken by the band despite Needy's attempts to stop her. Later that evening, Jennifer, covered in blood, appears in Needy's kitchen and proceeds to eat food from the refrigerator. Unable to digest the matter, she vomits a trail of black, spiny fluid and then leaves in a hurry as Needy calls after her.
The next morning at school, Jennifer appears fine and shrugs off the concerns of Needy. While the small town is devastated by the numerous deaths caused by the fire, Jennifer seduces the school's football captain in the woods naked and then attacks him, where his disemboweled corpse is later found. Meanwhile, Low Shoulder gains popularity due to their rumored heroism during the fire and offers to make a charity appearance at the school's spring formal. Low Shoulder's song "Through the Trees" had become the town's unofficial anthem and the newly released single would donate 3% of the profits to the people who lost loved ones in the fire.
A month later, Jennifer is beginning to look pale and accepts a date with school goth/punk
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
Colin (Kyle Gallner
Kyle Gallner
Kyle Gallner is an American actor. He is possibly best known for his portrayal of Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas in the Teen neo-noir television series Veronica Mars, and for guest-starring in teen sci-fi drama Smallville as superhero Bart Allen, an adaptation of the character of The Flash and...
), whom she brutally kills that night. While Needy and her boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons
Johnny Simmons
Johnny Simmons is an American actor.Simmons was born in Montgomery, Alabama and was raised in Dallas, Texas, where he attended Nathan Adams Elementary and T. C. Marsh Middle School. He is a 2005 graduate of W. T. White High School...
), engage in sex, Needy senses something dreadful has happened. She leaves in a panic and almost runs over Jennifer, covered in blood. She rushes home and finds Jennifer in her bedroom who makes out with her and soon explains what happened after the fire: Low Shoulder took her into the woods, and offered her as a virgin
Virginity
Virginity refers to the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. There are cultural and religious traditions which place special value and significance on this state, especially in the case of unmarried females, associated with notions of personal purity, honor and worth...
sacrifice
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
to Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
in exchange for fame and fortune. However, although the sacrifice and greedy exchange were a success, Jennifer was not a virgin, and when the lead singer Nikolai (Adam Brody
Adam Brody
Adam Jared Brody is an American film and television actor and part time musician. He began his career in 1995, appearing on Gilmore Girls and other series, and subsequently came to fame for his role as Seth Cohen on The O.C. Brody later appeared in several film roles, including Mr. & Mrs...
) murdered her, a demon
Demon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
ic spirit took over her body
Demonic possession
Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of an individual by a malevolent supernatural being. Descriptions of demonic possessions often include erased memories or personalities, convulsions, “fits” and fainting as if one were dying...
. It is revealed then that Jennifer knew she needed human flesh and blood to survive. In addition to the known murdered townspeople, Jennifer also encountered the exchange student, Ahmet, after the fire and upon hearing that no one knew he had survived, she took him into the woods and ate him, making him her first victim.
The next day at school, as the town is stunned by Colin's death, Needy goes to the school library's occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
section and surmises that Jennifer is a succubus
Succubus
In folklore traced back to medieval legend, a succubus is a female demon appearing in dreams who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse. The male counterpart is the incubus...
; she is weakest when she is hungry, and must eat flesh in order to sustain her life and appearance. Needy tells Chip about her discoveries and warns him not to attend the dance. He does not believe her and she subsequently breaks up with him in order to protect him.
Chip goes to the dance, hoping to meet with Needy, but he is intercepted by Jennifer, who seduces him and takes him to an abandoned pool house. Needy arrives there and finds Jennifer feeding on Chip. Needy tries to drown Jennifer and then helps Chip out of the pool. Jennifer, hovering in the air, attacks Needy but is later stabbed by Chip with a pool skimmer. Jennifer escapes while Needy watches her boyfriend die.
Needy then decides she must kill Jennifer. She goes to Jennifer's home and sees Jennifer lying on her bed picking out her next victims in her yearbook, and she crashes through the window and fights her with a boxcutter. Culminating with a stab to the heart, Needy finally destroys the demon and kills Jennifer. Jennifer's mother (Carrie Genzel) comes in and finds Needy with the utility knife on top of her daughter's body. Soon after, Needy is brought to an asylum. Since she was bitten by Jennifer, she has obtained some of Jennifer's supernatural powers. Set upon revenge for what was done to Jennifer and herself, she escapes the mental facility and hitchhikes a ride to the hotel where Low Shoulder are staying; she makes her way to their room and brutally murders them all.
Cast
Megan FoxMegan Fox
Megan Denise Fox is an American actress and model. She began her acting career in 2001 with several minor television and film roles, and played a regular role on Hope & Faith. In 2004, she launched her film career with a role in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen...
was in negotiations to star as Jennifer Check since the film was announced in 2007, and was officially cast in October 2007. Fox said the reason she agreed to the role was her love for the script. "I think what I loved about the movie is it's so unapologetic and how completely inappropriate it is at all times", she said. "That was my favorite part about the script and about the character. It's fun to be able to say the shit that she got to say and get away with it and how people find it charming." Asked how acting in a film like this is different than acting in Transformers, Fox said "there's [no] distractions, like there's no robots to distract you from whatever performance I do give. So, if it's terrible, you're gonna fucking know that it's really terrible". She said despite this aspect of the business being intimidating, she enjoyed portraying the character. "I wasn't really sure what I was doing", said Fox. "I was just trying to have fun with it and I felt like I was able to make fun of my own image as to how some people might perceive Megan Fox to be. I was just sort of flying freely and I hope some of it works."
In balancing out the film's horror with humor, Fox said she relied heavily on Diablo Cody
Diablo Cody
Brook Busey , better known by the pen name Diablo Cody, is an American screenwriter, writer, blogger, journalist, and author. She was first known for her candid chronicling of her year as a stripper in her Pussy Ranch blog and her 2006 memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper...
's script and Karyn Kusama
Karyn Kusama
Karyn Kusama is an American film director and screenwriter.A graduate of New York University's film school, her début production Girlfight won both the Director's Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival...
's direction to pull it off. "I have a very specific sense of humor, things that I think are funny aren't going to fly with middle America", she stated. "It's going to eliminate some of the audience, so you need someone there to tell you you can't do that."
In February 2008, Amanda Seyfried
Amanda Seyfried
Amanda Michelle Seyfried is an American actress, singer-songwriter and former child model. She began her career as a child model when she was 11, and at 15 began her career as an actress, starting off with uncredited roles and moving on to recurring roles on As the World Turns and All My...
was cast as Anita "Needy" Lesnicki, the "plain Jane" best friend to Fox's character with whom she shares a somewhat lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
infatuation. Seyfried said it was a relief to play the nerdy character opposite Fox. "Being a lead (like Megan), you have that weird pressure of feeling like you have to look attractive", she stated. "In this movie, I didn't worry about any of that shit. I don't want to play the one that everybody is supposed to want to have sex with."
Chud.com reported that the filmmakers were looking at actual rock band members Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy
Fall Out Boy
Fall Out Boy is an American rock band from Wilmette, Illinois, formed in 2001. The band consists of vocalist, guitarist and composer Patrick Stump, bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz, guitarist Joe Trohman, and drummer Andy Hurley. The band released five studio albums from 2003–2008...
and Joel Madden
Joel Madden
Joel Rueben Madden is an American singer, record producer, actor, DJ, and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, best known as the lead vocalist for the pop punk band Good Charlotte.-Early life:...
of Good Charlotte
Good Charlotte
Good Charlotte is an American rock band from Waldorf, Maryland that formed in 1996. Since 1998, the band's constant members have been lead vocalist Joel Madden, lead guitarist and back-up vocalist Benji Madden, bass guitarist Paul Thomas and rhythm guitarist and keyboardist Billy Martin...
to portray male lead Nikolai Wolf. Also considered was actor Chad Michael Murray
Chad Michael Murray
Chad Michael Murray is an American actor, former fashion model and spokesperson. Murray is well known for portraying Lucas Scott in The CW young adult drama series One Tree Hill, in addition to the commercially successful films A Cinderella Story, Freaky Friday and House of Wax...
. In March 2008, actor Johnny Simmons
Johnny Simmons
Johnny Simmons is an American actor.Simmons was born in Montgomery, Alabama and was raised in Dallas, Texas, where he attended Nathan Adams Elementary and T. C. Marsh Middle School. He is a 2005 graduate of W. T. White High School...
was reportedly cast as Nikolai. However, Adam Brody
Adam Brody
Adam Jared Brody is an American film and television actor and part time musician. He began his career in 1995, appearing on Gilmore Girls and other series, and subsequently came to fame for his role as Seth Cohen on The O.C. Brody later appeared in several film roles, including Mr. & Mrs...
was officially cast in the role of Nikolai, while Simmons was then given the role of Chip Dove. Brody said he did not do his own vocals. "My singing voice is still going through puberty", he said. "They gave me a singing lesson or two, and it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's not anything anyone would choose to hear."
Additional cast members include J. K. Simmons
J. K. Simmons
Jonathan Kimble "J. K." Simmons is an American actor. He is best known for his roles on television as Dr. Emil Skoda in NBC's Law & Order , Assistant Police Chief Will Pope in TNT's The Closer, neo-Nazi Vernon Schillinger in the HBO prison drama Oz, on film as J...
as Mr. Wroblewski, Kyle Gallner
Kyle Gallner
Kyle Gallner is an American actor. He is possibly best known for his portrayal of Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas in the Teen neo-noir television series Veronica Mars, and for guest-starring in teen sci-fi drama Smallville as superhero Bart Allen, an adaptation of the character of The Flash and...
as Colin Gray, Amy Sedaris
Amy Sedaris
Amy Louise Sedaris is an American actress, author, and comedian. She is known for playing the character Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central television series Strangers with Candy. Sedaris regularly collaborates with her older brother, humorist and author David Sedaris...
as Toni Lesnicki, Cynthia Stevenson
Cynthia Stevenson
Cynthia Stevenson is an American actress.Stevenson was born in Oakland, California, the daughter of Gayle, an editor, and Al Stevenson, an upholstery warehouse owner. She grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia....
as Mrs. Dove, Carrie Genzel as Mrs. Check, Juan Riedinger as Dirk, Chris Pratt
Chris Pratt
Christopher Michael "Chris" Pratt is an American actor, best known for his roles as Harold Brighton "Bright" Abbott in the television series Everwood, the recurring character Winchester "Ché" Cook in season 4 of The OC, Andy Dwyer in the television series Parks and Recreation and for portraying...
as Officer Roman Duda, Juno Ruddell as Officer Warzak, Keegan Sigurnjak as Meek School Nerd, Aman Johal
Aman Johal
Aman Johal is an Indo-Canadian film actor.Film credits include Bad News Bears , Juno and as Ahmet from India in the 2009 film Jennifer's Body...
as Ahmet from India, Josh Emerson as Jonas Konelle and Lance Henriksen
Lance Henriksen
Lance James Henriksen is an American actor and artist best known to film and television audiences for his roles in science fiction, action, and horror films such as the Alien film franchise, and on television shows such as Millennium....
as the driver near the end of film. A number of supporting and minor roles were filled by supporting and minor cast members from Jason Reitman
Jason Reitman
Jason Reitman is a Canadian/American film director, screenwriter, and producer, best known for directing the films Thank You for Smoking , Juno , and Up in the Air . As of February 2, 2010, he has received three Academy Award nominations, two of which are for Best Director...
's previous films Thank You for Smoking and Juno
Juno (film)
Juno is a 2007 comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Ellen Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting an unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Olivia Thirlby, J. K....
, including Simmons, Brody, Johal and Valerie Tian
Valerie Tian
Valerie Tian is a Chinese-Canadian actress. She is known for her role as Su-Chin in Juno.-Career:In the summer of 2001, Tian auditioned for Canadian director Mina Shum, while she was casting for her feature Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity and won leading role of Mindy Ho...
.
Development
Jennifer's Body is the follow-up to writer and producer Diablo Cody's and Jason Reitman's collaboration efforts on JunoJuno (film)
Juno is a 2007 comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Ellen Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting an unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Olivia Thirlby, J. K....
. In October 2007, Fox Atomic
Fox Atomic
Fox Atomic was a production label of film studio 20th Century Fox created in 2006 to generate comedy and genre films.In 2008, Fox Atomic scaled back its production operations and shut down all marketing divisions...
pre-emptively purchased the rights to Cody's script with Megan Fox to star. Peter Rice, who oversees Fox Searchlight
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Fox Searchlight Pictures, established in 1998, is a film division of Fox Filmed Entertainment alongside the larger Fox studio 20th Century Fox...
and Fox Atomic, brought in the project as Fox Searchlight had previously distributed Cody's film Juno. Mason Novick and Reitman's producing parter Dan Dubiecki signed as producers in November 2007 with plans to produce the film under Hard C, which is housed at Fox Searchlight. Reitman commented, "We want to make unusual films, and anything that turns a genre on its ear interests Dan and I." Karyn Kusama
Karyn Kusama
Karyn Kusama is an American film director and screenwriter.A graduate of New York University's film school, her début production Girlfight won both the Director's Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival...
was announced as director in January 2008. Kusama said she signed on to the project because of the script. "I was blessed to read this script at a moment where the producers were meeting with directors and it just knocked me out. It was just so original, so imaginative", she stated. "That's what it is about this script and the world is that it feels like a fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
gone psycho and I think that's what most fairy tales actually started as." Additionally, Cody, Reitman and Kusama knew the film would be R rated because of the language.
In February 2008, a cease and desist was given to a writer at CC2K.us after they posted an advance script review for the film. The Latino Review also posted an advance review. At the time CC2K.us received their cease and desist order, questions were raised why Latino Review's largely positive script review was allowed to stay posted while CC2K was being forced by Fox Searchlight to remove their mainly negative coverage. Although Latino Review was later asked to remove their review, numerous other websites and blogs published their own critiques of the script.
Cody stated that when writing the script, she was "simultaneously trying to pay tribute to some of the conventions that we've already seen in horror, yet, at the same time, kind of turn them on their ear". One of her influences from the 1980s horror genre was the film The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys is a 1987 American teen comedy horror film directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Kiefer Sutherland, Jami Gertz, Corey Feldman, Dianne Wiest, Edward Herrmann, Alex Winter, Jamison Newlander, and Barnard Hughes....
. She wanted to "honor that, and at the same time, [she] had never really seen this particular subgenre done with girls and [she] tried to do a little of both". Despite this, she said she had noticed that "the last survivor standing in the typical horror film is a woman" and that because of this she feels "horror has always had kind of a feminist angle to it in a weird way and, at the same time, it's kind of delightfully exploitative". Jennifer's Body could play on both of these aspects.
Cody said she wanted the film to speak to female empowerment and explore the complex relationships between best friends. "(Director) Karyn Kusama and I are both outspoken feminists
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
", she said. "We wanted to subvert the classic horror model of women being terrorized. I want to write roles that service women. I want to tell stories from a female perspective. I want to create good parts for actresses where they're not just accessories to men." Addressing "the male-dominated" horror genre, Cody said "a key reason for writing the film was to bring to the screen a new way of expressing the intensity of female bonds" and that the adolescent female friendships she experienced were unparalleled in their intensity. She wanted to show the "almost horrific" aspect of such devotion and its relation to parasitism
Parasitism
Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host. Traditionally parasite referred to organisms with lifestages that needed more than one host . These are now called macroparasites...
.
The producers decided to have the film open with the statement "Hell is a teenage girl" to reflect the "horrors" of puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
and that "the hellish emotions felt during high school often reappear as teenage girls mature into young women". Cody stated:
There's the scene where Jennifer's sitting alone smearing makeup on her face. I always thought that was such a sad image. She's so vulnerable. I don't know any woman who hasn't had a moment sitting in front of the mirror and thinking, 'Help me, I want to be somebody else.' What makes it extra affecting is that [Megan Fox] is stunning.
Cody crafted the story to follow a night that ends in a tragic fire, after which Jennifer is kidnapped and set up as a sacrifice which goes awry. Jennifer, now possessed by a demon and subsequently altered into a succubus
Succubus
In folklore traced back to medieval legend, a succubus is a female demon appearing in dreams who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse. The male counterpart is the incubus...
, sets out on a bloody rampage in which she devours boys, and it is up to Needy to stop her. In sort of a reversal aspect of how puberty changes a girl's life
Menstrual cycle
The menstrual cycle is the scientific term for the physiological changes that can occur in fertile women for the purpose of sexual reproduction. This article focuses on the human menstrual cycle....
, Jennifer must consume the blood of others once a month or she becomes weak and plain-looking. "It's a meek shall inherit the Earth sort of thing. I think it's always really satisfying and cathartic to see a character that was previously bullied become super human", said Cody. Cody said the script is not a reflection of any part of her own life, but that she is more like character Needy. "I would say I was more of a Needy than a Jennifer. I was never an Alpha female
Alpha (biology)
In social animals, the alpha is the individual in the community with the highest rank. Where one male and one female fulfill this role, they are referred to as the alpha pair...
, and I've never gotten off with bullying other people", she said. "If I had to choose, I was definitely the one being shoved, not the one shoving."
The nickname "Needy" was given to Seyfried's character to underline the essentially condescending dynamic in Jennifer and Needy's high school relationship, as Needy often admires Jennifer and feels she needs her. Cody said "Jennifer is a product of a culture that pressures girls to be skinny, beautiful and just like movie stars" and that she "hopes the film inspires girls to take life into their own hands and do with it, what they want". "If I had gone to this movie as a teenage girl, I would've come out of it feeling totally inspired", she stated. "I would've wanted to write, I would've wanted to create and I would've felt like I watched something that was speaking to me."
Assigned to direct the film, Kusama said, "I think also a lot of horror is about femaleness – whether it's Carrie or Rosemary's Baby
Rosemary's Baby
Rosemary's Baby is a 1967 best-selling horror novel by Ira Levin, his second published book. Major elements of the story were inspired by the publicity surrounding the Church of Satan of Anton LaVey which had been founded in 1966.-Plot summary:...
." She said she feels "like there's a lot of fear of the female or kind of celebration of it in some weird way and something about this movie managed to take the fear and the sense that it's the female that ultimately survives and sort of marry that in a really interesting way".
Addressing her decision to have Jennifer and Needy be romantically intimate at one point during the film, which takes place in the form of a long and passionate kissing scene, Cody said she did not write the scene to score publicity. Speaking of the scene's media hype, she said that "if the two protagonists of the film were a guy and a girl and in a particularly tense moment, they shared a kiss, no one would say it was gratuitous" but "the fact that they're women means it's some kind of stunt". The scene was "intended to be something profound and meaningful" to her and Kusama. She further stated:
Obviously we knew people were going to totally sensationalize it. They're beautiful girls, the scene is hot — I'm not afraid to say that. There is a sexual energy between the girls which is kind of authentic, because I know when I was a teen-aged girl, the friendships that I had with other girls were almost romantic, they were so intense. I wanted to sleep at my friend's house every night, I wanted to wear her clothes, we would talk on the phone until our ears ached. I wanted to capture that heightened feeling you get as an adolescent that you don't really feel as a grownup. (laughs) You like [your] friends when you're a grownup, but you don't need to sleep in the same bed with them and talk to them on the phone until 5 a.m. every night.
Though the film is part comedy, Cody initially intended for it to be a "very dark, very brooding" traditional slasher film. Close to "a third of the way into the process" she felt that she was incapable of doing so because "the humor just kept sneaking in". She stated, "I have a macabre sense of humor. A lot of the things in the movie that are horrifying are funny to me." Feeling that "comedy films and horror films are kind of similar" due to being films where you can significantly gauge intense reactions from the audience, Cody stated, "They're laughing, they're screaming, it's not a passive experience. So, I actually think comedy and horror are kind of similar in that way."
Design and effects
Special effect
The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
s were KNB EFX GROUP and the Moving Picture Company
Moving Picture Company
The Moving Picture Company is a post production facility creating digital visual effects and computer animation for feature films, commercials, music videos and television...
(MPC). For Jennifer's demonic form, the creators used different techniques. "I actually wasn't in [the makeup chair] that much because they created an entire head. They did a live cast of me from the shoulders up. They created me and then put the teeth in", stated Fox. "To save my face, they had a photo double that would come in and do most of the crazy monster makeup - they would do that on her. So it would go from me, then in post-production it would somehow go to her and the fake head. They would mix them all together."
For "the vomit scene" where Jennifer has just arrived at Needy's house after being murdered and inhabited by a demon, Fox said the liquid she was given to spit out "was actually ...chocolate syrup initially". "We did a few takes where I would just do this scream and sort of puke Hershey
The Hershey Company
The Hershey Company, known until April 2005 as the Hershey Foods Corporation and commonly called Hershey's, is the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America. Its headquarters are in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is also home to Hershey's Chocolate World. It was founded by Milton S...
's chocolate syrup. Scratch the Hershey's because I don't want to endorse that or anything", she stated. "And then, special effects did a rig that clamps onto my ear and you revisit it in the pool scene..." Fox said it "clips on. It goes around the back of my ear and then I bite down on it on the side of my face, like this, and it projectiles. It's a tube..."
Directing the scene, Kusama said it had a classic feel. Fox agreed, "Yeah, and it projects whatever that material was. I'm not sure. It was pretty intense. I think it was worse for [Seyfried] because she's the one that got puked on. I was the one doing the puking."
For more practical special effects on the set as opposed to CG
Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
, Kusama said it "was a choice that we all sort of made organically". She said they appreciate "those kind of effects in older movies and [questions] sometimes how much more effective it is to use a ton of CG" and that they "always started with a practical effect and then moved forward from there to lay a groundwork of something that's actually physically, materially there". They found this to be more enjoyable.
Erik Nordby of KNB (known for his work on The Haunting in Connecticut
The Haunting in Connecticut
The Haunting in Connecticut is a 2009 American psychological horror film produced by Gold Circle Films and directed by Peter Cornwell. It is alleged to have occurred to Karen Parker and her family, though Ray Garton, author of In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting , has publicly distanced...
, which also features co-star Kyle Gallner
Kyle Gallner
Kyle Gallner is an American actor. He is possibly best known for his portrayal of Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas in the Teen neo-noir television series Veronica Mars, and for guest-starring in teen sci-fi drama Smallville as superhero Bart Allen, an adaptation of the character of The Flash and...
) stated, "We immediately went into pitch mode in January and spent a solid two weeks trying to not only bid the script but also collect as much reference material and stuff for the first client get together." He said the director and producers wanted an "old-school, hands-off, lo-fi approach to the visual effects" so that the horror elements would not overpower the storyline. Based on the script, MPC similarly came to the same conclusion and "provided a clear direction" for Nordby and his team. "At that point when we met with them, they had already met with KNB, who had already done up a stylized still of what, at the time, they were calling 'Evil Jennifer,'" he said. "There was a lot of info yet to come, but based on the script, Jennifer goes from very beautiful Megan Fox to a very ghoulish, succubus creature whose jaw distends half-way down her face." Nordby said the look was eventually toned down at the wishes of MPC. From there, KNB "produced some tests, grabbing a bunch of stills from [Fox] and [did their] work to indicate how that balance could exist between special effects and visual effects and still maintain a level of subtlety" and that "[MPC] responded really well".
The teams wanted to "maintain some sort of the Megan Fox allure" but said that it was "incredibly difficult because as soon as [they] warped her face in any direction, the shine kind of came off it". To combat this, they ended up focusing on anything below her nose, where they had the freedom to make things "as horrific as [they] needed to" and then above her nose, "[they] could manipulate it somewhat with warps and color correction in her eye sockets. So even at her worst, she had some of that sexiness throughout".
Nordby said most of the attention was devoted to Jennifer's face and that "very quickly in combination" with special effects and makeup, MPC thought up a five-station system for what Jennifer goes through. Nordby stated:
Stage one is beautiful Jennifer and then two and three were strictly makeup where her eyes become more recessed and she would start to look plain like the rest of us. And stage four was some custom denturesDenturesDentures are prosthetic devices constructed to replace missing teeth, and which are supported by surrounding soft and hard tissues of the oral cavity. Conventional dentures are removable, however there are many different denture designs, some which rely on bonding or clasping onto teeth or dental...
that KNB made for her, and then visual effects in stage four was mainly facial warping and recessing her eyes some more and having a pinning effect to her irisesIris (anatomy)The iris is a thin, circular structure in the eye, responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupils and thus the amount of light reaching the retina. "Eye color" is the color of the iris, which can be green, blue, or brown. In some cases it can be hazel , grey, violet, or even pink...
and a variety of other musculature deforms, just bringing her cheek bones down more. And stage five was the full on, as crazy as it gets, which you don't really see until near the end.
During testing, Nordby and the special effects teams realized that getting Fox in and out of the appliance used to create Jennifer's murderous jaw would be too time-consuming. To remedy this, they hired a photo double. "[E]very day (for about 10 days) she would sit in a chair with this full appliance on her and we would shoot this jaw, and then all [Fox] would have to do is the dentures", stated Nordby. He said that "when it came time to shoot any of these jaw moments, [Fox] would act out in rehearsal how she was going to attack her victim and [they would] fine tune that blocking so it was relatively locked". The camera accompanied them in the same way, as "it would roll and she would put her dentures in, and they would really distort her face" in a way that would produce a satisfying and nice side effect. Additionally, the team would have Fox wear contact lens
Contact lens
A contact lens, or simply contact, is a lens placed on the eye. They are considered medical devices and can be worn to correct vision, for cosmetic or therapeutic reasons. In 2004, it was estimated that 125 million people use contact lenses worldwide, including 28 to 38 million in the United...
es and go through exactly the same motions as normal Jennifer. "But then I would shoot all the key poses that existed in whatever moves the digital double was doing, so that we had as much of that appliance in that lighting condition that we could get", said Nordby. "KNB also created a hairless but high detailed head of the stage five Jennifer that had an articulating jaw."
MPC additionally worked on the disappearing waterfall that serves as Jennifer's grave when she is killed at the beginning of the film. They transformed the mysterious waterfall into a whirlpool. "We came up with an approach that we thought would work because we had a lot of confidence in our water sims", stated Nordby. "The waterfall appears both as a day and night shot, so we had to integrate with the water. And the night shots play a pivotal role in the film, and we do a huge crane over." They could not lock it to a pan
Panning (camera)
In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device...
or to a tilt and filming the shots was difficult due to the actual base of the waterfall being out of reach. Nordby said, "I eventually lowered down a shot — a ton of reference of the area because I knew we'd have to do some digi-matte work to recreate the basin that the whirlpool ends up in." They soon realized that there was an insufficient amount of churning and foam to read as real as the location. The CG Supervisor, Pete Dionne, presented a different idea. "He grabbed chunks of that river and tialing it so that it had a nice stretch of birds' eye point of view of the water that existed on the location in the lighting situation we were trying to match", stated Nordby. "And then he projected that onto a whirlpool of animated sprites
Sprite (computer graphics)
In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...
and had similar enough texture to the actual water that existed there, but pulled control into lighting it and could add depth mainly to the center of it." Dealing with "very shallow" water, the team had to take extra care when filming the scenes.
During the film's fire scene, Cody appears as a character in the barroom. "To me, I am afraid of fire and fire technics and all that stuff which is why I don't know why I asked to be in the bar scene because I've never exploded before", she said. She had asked to be set on fire. "That was me trying to conquer a fear. By the way, they would not allow me to do a full burn for insurance purposes, even though I argued that Burt Reynolds
Burt Reynolds
Burton Leon "Burt" Reynolds, Jr. is an American actor. Some of his memorable roles include Bo 'Bandit' Darville in Smokey and the Bandit, Lewis Medlock in Deliverance, Bobby "Gator" McCluskey in White Lightning and sequel Gator, Paul Crewe and Coach Nate Scarborough in The Longest Yard and its...
had done it once", stated Cody. "But apparently he got really hurt, so they would not let me. To me, there's nothing more horrifying than being stuck in a claustrophobic space as it is burning down so, to me, it was more like tapping into a personal fear. That's not tough."
Filming
In late 2007, Fox Atomic had plans to film Jennifer's Body before a possible writer's strike. However, when the Writers Guild of America strike began, shooting was then moved to March 7, 2008, in Burnaby, British ColumbiaBritish Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, specifically at Robert Burnaby Park near Cariboo Hill Secondary School. Some of the scenes, particularly those situated in a school setting, were filmed in local Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
-area schools such as Vancouver Technical Secondary School
Vancouver Technical Secondary School
Vancouver Technical Secondary School, often referred to as Van Tech, is located on the East Side of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.-History:...
, Langley Secondary School
Langley Secondary School
Langley Secondary is a public high school in Langley, British Columbia part of School District 35 Langley. It is the oldest secondary school in the Langley School District, having been opened in 1949....
and University Hill Secondary School
University Hill Secondary School
University Hill Secondary School, locally known as U-Hill, is a public secondary school located in the University Endowment Lands, just west of the city limits of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.-Mission statement:...
.
Fox said that while filming her highly anticipated kissing scene with Seyfried that Seyfried was "extremely uncomfortable" but that she herself was not. "I feel much safer with girls, so I felt more comfortable kissing [Seyfried] than kissing any of the other people that I had to kiss", she said. Seyfried's uneasiness in the scene caused "giggling fits" between takes. Seyfried said that neither of them wanted to do the kiss because they felt it was just for promotional purposes. She agreed with Fox that she was uneasy about acting out the scene. "It was my first time doing a real kissing scene with a woman", she stated. "It is just weird. It is a woman. With a woman's smell — soft and floraly — and maybe the pheromone
Pheromone
A pheromone is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting outside the body of the secreting individual to impact the behavior of the receiving individual...
s are different. Something about it felt uncomfortable for me."
Music
Music was incorporated as an essential part of the film; there are "very specific bands" placed in band posters in some parts, such as in the selection of the band poster on the walls of the bar. Kusama said "[t]he music was a huge component of the movie" and this is first evident with "the songs that we see and hear performed, but then, just the vibe of the movie actually". She said, "As the movie progresses, it becomes a pretty clearly music-oriented movie. It's sort of a youth movie. Some of those bands were totally made up and some of them are not."Reviews
The film received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregate website Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reports 42% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based on 166 reviews, with an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
rating of 5.1/10, and a generally negative 35% approval rating from "top" critics based on 31 reviews. The site's consensus of opinion is that "Jennifer's Body features occasionally clever dialogue but the horror/comic premise fails to be either funny or scary enough to satisfy". At Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalized
Normalization (statistics)
In one usage in statistics, normalization is the process of isolating statistical error in repeated measured data. A normalization is sometimes based on a property...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film holds a mixed/average score of 47 based on 29 reviews, while IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
gives the film 2.5 stars out of 5.
Film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
enjoyed the film, dubbing it a "Twilight
Twilight (2008 film)
Twilight is a 2008 American romantic vampire film based on Stephenie Meyer's popular novel of the same name. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It is the first film in The Twilight Saga film series...
for boys" and saying "as a movie about a flesh-eating cheerleader, it's better than it has to be". He said that within Cody there is "the soul of an artist, and her screenplay brings to this material a certain edge, a kind of gleeful relish, that's uncompromising. This isn't your assembly-line teen horror thriller". Additionally, he complimented Fox as "[coming] through" in her portrayal and "play[ing] the role straight". He gave the film three out of four stars. Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
gave the film three out of four stars as well. Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
stated it is "Hot! Hot! Hot!" and that "Director Karyn Kusama is torn between duty to female empowerment and slasher convention". He credited Fox's portrayal as showing "a comic flair" that Transformers "never investigated". Tom Charity of CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
said "[the] last time a horror flick tried for a distinctly female point of view the result was Twilight, which was more of a wan gothic romance than a chiller" and "Fox makes a convincing vixen, callously picking up victims whenever her luster begins to fade. It's not hard to imagine she can have anyone who takes her fancy". Charity credited the dialogue as "bitingly smart, funny teen-speak ...along with sharp pop culture references".
Mary Pols of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine called the film entertaining and reasoned "[t]here is a lot of intelligent camp here, and some sharply observed characterizations" and Cody and Kusama's "depiction of the ways in which women like Needy are willing to compromise themselves to indulge an ultimately less secure friend is spot-on". Dana Stevens of Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
praised the film for being "luscious and powerful, sexy and scary, maddening at times, but impossible to stop watching" and a "wicked black comedy with unexpected emotional resonance, one of the most purely pleasurable movies of the year so far". Elle's
Elle (magazine)
Elle is a worldwide magazine of French origin that focuses on women's fashion, beauty, health, and entertainment. Elle is also the world's largest fashion magazine. It was founded by Pierre Lazareff and his wife Hélène Gordon in 1945. The title, in French, means "she".-History:Elle was founded in...
Karen Durbin said the film not only puts "a fresh spin on female-centric pop genres but also own[s] them outright" and is "rich with first-rate performances".
The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...
Rene Rodriguez likened the film's "[effective exploitation] of the genre as a metaphor for adolescent
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
angst, female sexuality and the strange, sometimes corrosive bonds between girls who claim to be best friends" to Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
's 1976 film Carrie. She applauded the film for being fearless when delving into the subject of teen sex
Adolescent sexuality
Adolescent sexuality refers to sexual feelings, behavior and development in adolescents and is a stage of human sexuality. Sexuality is often a vital aspect of teenagers' lives...
and for reversing the tradition/idea that only "bad girls have sex when they're 16 [and the] good ones — those who, like Needy, do their homework and are responsible — never slide past first base". Nick Pinkerton of Sci Fi Weekly called Fox and Seyfried's lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
kissing scene "the best close-up girl-girl liplock" since Cruel Intentions
Cruel Intentions
Cruel Intentions is a 1999 American drama film starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, and Selma Blair. The film is an adaptation of the 18th-century French epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Laclos and is set among wealthy teenagers living in modern New York...
, and A. O. Scott
A. O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott, known as A. O. Scott , is an American journalist and critic. He is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with Manohla Dargis.-Background and education:...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
concluded "the movie deserves — and is likely to win — a devoted cult following, despite its flaws" and "[these flaws] are mitigated by a sensibility that mixes playful pop-culture ingenuity with a healthy shot of feminist anger".
Giving a partially negative review of the film was Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York, who said the "movie has a centerfold sheen to it — and some lesbianic soft-core flirtation to match — as its plot dives deeply into Twilight-esque heavy-melo meltdown in the last act" and that "Cody throws one too many losses at Needy; the screenwriter loses her satiric way about halfway through. But for a while, this has real fangs". Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
said, "There's a certain kooky, kinky fun to be had with Jennifer's Body" but that "[a]dmittedly, this is the stuff of lurid adolescent distraction, not great cinema" and "is strictly a niche item but provides a goofy, campy bookend to Drag Me to Hell
Drag Me to Hell
Drag Me to Hell is a 2009 American horror film, directed by Sam Raimi, with a screenplay by Sam and Ivan Raimi. The plot focuses on loan officer Christine Brown , who tries to impress her boss by refusing to extend a loan to a gypsy woman by the name of Mrs. Ganush...
on the B-movie
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
shelf. Watch it, forget it, move on". San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
Peter Hartlaub stated, "Enjoy the film for its witty dialogue and fun performances, but know that there isn't a single good scare. An episode of Murder, She Wrote
Murder, She Wrote
Murder, She Wrote is an American television mystery series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for 12 seasons from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network, with 264 episodes transmitted. It was followed by four TV films and a spin-off series,...
has more thrills." Hartlaub felt the film is not bad, is "almost always pleasing" and that Fox "proves that she has some [acting] range" but "the chances that it will be somebody else's pop culture reference 27 years from now are slim to none". Joe Neumaier of New York Daily News said, "Fox merely needs to look either vacant or evil, which the Transformers boy-toy does spookily well" but "[w]ords and story are still the lifeblood of a movie, and Jennifer's Body is filled like a Twinkie with half-fleshed-out ideas". Disagreeing with Fox's performance, Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
's Michael Phillips called Fox "a pretty bad actress" who "doesn't seem to get Cody's sense of humor. At all". He reasoned the "movie's partially redeemed by Seyfried, who makes her character more than a repository for audience sympathy" and "her make-out scene with Fox is handled with more suspense and care than anything else in the movie".
Michael Sragow of Baltimore Sun described the only "perfect aspect" of Jennifer's Body as being its title. "No one is going to like this movie for its brain", he said. Claudia Puig of USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
stated of the film, "Jennifer's Body is not as hot as you hope it would be". Where others praised the film's dialogue, MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
's Alonso Duralde called the writing lazy and "[w]orse still, all of Cody's trademark pop-culture–infused dialogue stands out as artificial and precious". Jennifer's Body, he said, wants "so badly" to be a Heathers
Heathers
Heathers is a 1989 black comedy film starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty. The film portrays four girls in a trend-setting clique at a fictional Ohio high school...
-esque dark comedy, "but its shortcomings makes you appreciate why that earlier film was so great". Ty Burr
Ty Burr
Ty Burr has been a film critic for the Boston Globe since 2002 where he reviews films alongside Wesley Morris.Born in 1957, he studied film at Dartmouth College and New York University and has written three books: The Hundred Greatest Movies of All Time, The Hundred Greatest Stars of All Time and...
of The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
also said the film wants to be like Heathers, and reminded him "a lot" of Heathers but the only scene in the film that "actually feels dangerous" is when the possessed Jennifer initiates a long and passionate kiss with Needy, which the film "very, very nervously backs away from" and that "Jennifer's Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre".
Box office
Though the film was expected to pull in a significant number of the late teenage/young adultYoung adult (psychology)
A young adult, according to Erik Erikson's stages of human development, is generally a person between the age of 20 - 40, whereas an adolescent is a person between the age of 13 - 19, although definitions and opinions vary. The young adult stage in human development precedes middle adulthood. A...
audience, particularly males aged 17 and older, while Cody hoped for a large female turnout, it earned a "disappointing" $2.8 million on its opening Friday and $6.8 million its opening weekend at the North American box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
; the film placed #5, while 3D
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...
animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (film)
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a 2009 American computer-animated family comedy film, produced by Sony Pictures Animation, distributed by Columbia Pictures, and released on September 18, 2009. The film is loosely based on the children's book of the same name by Judi and Ron Barrett.The film...
placed #1 with $30.1 million. Produced for $16 million, Jennifer's Body did manage to attract the sizable female audience Cody wanted; 51% were female, with 70% of patrons under age 25. The film had been expected to benefit somewhat from its heavily marketed lesbian kissing scene between Fox and Seyfried, which, in addition to Fox being in the film, was thought to entice and successfully attract male viewers. IGN stated that such a scene is not as shocking as it was in past decades and cannot be expected to significantly pull in an audience. The film grossed $16,204,793 domestically and $15,351,268 in foreign sales, for a worldwide total of $31,556,061.
Box-office analysts and critics debated the film's underperformance. Analyst Jeff Bock, of Exhibitor Relations, reasoned the film underperformed at the box office due to two reasons; the first, he said, is the genre. Bock stated that Americans get horror and comedy, but with the idea "of those two things together in one place, people suddenly get very dumb". "The horror-comedy genre is the toughest sell in Hollywood", he said. He noted films Tremors
Tremors (film)
Tremors is a 1990 American science fiction horror comedy film directed by Ron Underwood, based on a screenplay by Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson, and starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross and Reba McEntire...
, Slither, Shaun of the Dead
Shaun of the Dead
Shaun of the Dead is a 2004 British zombie comedy directed by Edgar Wright, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and written by Pegg and Wright. Pegg plays Shaun, a man attempting to get some kind of focus in his life as he deals with his girlfriend, his mother and stepfather...
, Eight Legged Freaks
Eight Legged Freaks
Eight Legged Freaks is a 2002 comedy horror directed by Ellory Elkayem and stars David Arquette, Kari Wührer and Scott Terra. The plot concerns a collection of spiders that are exposed to toxic waste, causing them to grow to gigantic proportions and begin killing and harvesting...
and The Evil Dead series
The Evil Dead (franchise)
The Evil Dead is a trilogy of horror films created by Sam Raimi. The films focus on the protagonist, Ashley "Ash" J. Williams, played by Bruce Campbell, who deals with "deadites", which are undead antagonists created by the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis. The film series has since expanded into other...
, and said that while many of those are considered critical and business successes, "none of them have brought in the megabucks that a simple horror or comedy can." In addition, he labeled the Scream
Scream (film)
Scream is a 1996 American slasher film written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven. The film stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Drew Barrymore, and David Arquette...
franchise as more "straight-up horror" than comedy and stated Zombieland
Zombieland
Zombieland is a 2009 American zombie comedy film directed by Ruben Fleischer from a screenplay written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The film stars Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin as survivors of a zombie apocalypse...
s box office performance would determine the horror-comedy genre's current viability.
Despite other R-rated horror films having centered around teenagers, some such as Scream having been successful, Bock said the second reason Jennifer's Body underperformed at the box office is the R-rating, which he described as a "killer" for the film. He said the film is set in high school and "sounds like the perfect package for teens" but that "the R rating banned many teens from the theaters" and the studio was left with "an R-rated film marketed to whom, exactly?" Nicole Sperling of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
felt that it was a slow and disappointing weekend for the box office in general; 3D animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was steep competition, and with low box office performances by the Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting , from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck...
film The Informant! and Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Joanna Aniston is an American actress, film director, and producer, best known for her role as Rachel Green on the television sitcom Friends, a role which earned her an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.Aniston has also enjoyed a successful film career,...
film Love Happens, she concluded that this may support "the current hypothesis floating around Hollywood, that movie stars no longer matter" and that it takes more than a name to open a film. S.T. VanAirsdale of Movieline
Movieline
Movieline is a website, formerly a Los Angeles-based film and entertainment magazine, started in 1985 as a local magazine and went national in 1989. Known for its cult status and popularity among film critics, the magazine eventually was retooled and named Movieline's Hollywood Life. The magazine...
echoed Sperling's sentiment about the weekend, as "some of the stinkiest high-profile openings in recent memory". He concluded five reasons for Jennifer's Bodys underperformance at the box office. The first, he said, is the distributor. "20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
's genre wing, Fox Atomic
Fox Atomic
Fox Atomic was a production label of film studio 20th Century Fox created in 2006 to generate comedy and genre films.In 2008, Fox Atomic scaled back its production operations and shut down all marketing divisions...
, had Jennifer's Body in the can by the time the mother ship shut it down last spring", he said. "Instead of offloading the film to Fox Searchlight, which nimbly maneuvered Diablo Cody's previous brainchild Juno to awards-season lucre in 2007, a decision was somehow reached to fill a gap in Big Fox's early fall slate with a gory" and "post-feminist horror romp starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried". VanAirsdale classified this as a "[b]ig mistake" and that "[y]ou'd have to go back to The Devil Wears Prada
The Devil Wears Prada (film)
The Devil Wears Prada is a 2006 comedy-drama film, a loose screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel of the same name. It stars Anne Hathaway as Andrea Sachs, a recent college graduate who goes to New York City and gets a job as a co-assistant to powerful and demanding fashion magazine...
to find an example of a Fox release that worked without a genuine male lead; you’d probably have to go back to Aliens
Aliens (film)
Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, William Hope, and Bill Paxton...
to find a genre example of such that they pulled off successfully." He named the second reason as the marketing:
Film screening
A film screening is the displaying of a motion picture or film, generally referring to a special showing as part of a film's production and release cycle...
as the third and fourth reasons; he said there was confusion about what day the film was going to debut in theatres, and that Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
is "a nation removed from the audience where the film's actual momentum had been accruing for at least a month" and that "this rarely works for early fall releases; not because news doesn’t travel, obviously, but because it peels away a layer of accessibility that accompanies New York and L.A. bows." The final reason, he attributed to the critics, despite the film having had support from himself and various other critics, agreeing with the sentiment that fusing horror and teen comedy confuses people. "Put them together... — especially in a semi-satirical fashion that turns the first genre's sex-and-death conventions on their heads — and you get a whole lot of dickheads sniping that Body didn’t do enough to adhere to convention." He mentioned Ty Burr
Ty Burr
Ty Burr has been a film critic for the Boston Globe since 2002 where he reviews films alongside Wesley Morris.Born in 1957, he studied film at Dartmouth College and New York University and has written three books: The Hundred Greatest Movies of All Time, The Hundred Greatest Stars of All Time and...
's review in particular, where Burr declared it as falling "into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre." VanAirsdale stated:
Hollywood.com box-office analyst and President Paul Dergarabedian said "the poor numbers don't mean Fox can't open a movie." "It may be a matter of just choosing the right projects for her", he told the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
. "She's trying to find a world beyond Transformers, and she will. She's young and has a lot of promise."
Soundtrack
The film's soundtrack was released by Fueled by RamenFueled by Ramen
Fueled by Ramen is an American record label which operates as a subsidiary of Warner Music Group, and is distributed by Atlantic Records. The label, founded in Gainesville, Florida, is based in New York City...
on August 25, 2009, and featured previously released music by various indie rock
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
and alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
bands such as White Lies
White Lies (band)
White Lies is an English indie rock band from Ealing, London. Formerly known as Fear of Flying, the band consists primarily of Harry McVeigh , Charles Cave , and Jack Lawrence-Brown...
, Florence + The Machine, Silversun Pickups
Silversun Pickups
Silversun Pickups is an alternative rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 2002. The band comprises Brian Aubert, Nikki Monninger, Christopher Guanlao, and Joe Lester....
and Black Kids
Black Kids
Black Kids is an American indie pop band from Jacksonville, Florida. The band's debut EP, Wizard of Ahhhs, received favorable critical response in 2007, and was followed by the Partie Traumatic album, which debuted at #5 on the UK Albums Chart in July 2008.-History:Black Kids formed in Jacksonville...
.
It also features pop punk band All Time Low
All Time Low
All Time Low is an American pop punk band from Baltimore, Maryland, formed in 2003.The band consists of vocalist and rhythm guitarist Alexander Gaskarth, lead guitarist and backing vocalist Jack Barakat, bassist and backing vocalist Zachary Merrick, and drummer Rian Dawson...
and electropop singer Little Boots
Little Boots
Victoria Christina Hesketh, also known by her stage name/pseudonym Little Boots, is an English electropop singer-songwriter. Her stage name comes from a nickname given to her by a friend, a reference to her unusually small feet...
.
In addition, the album features new songs from pop rock
Pop rock
Pop rock is a music genre which mixes a catchy pop style and light lyrics in its guitar-based rock songs. There are varying definitions of the term, ranging from a slower and mellower form of rock music to a subgenre of pop music...
artists such as Cobra Starship
Cobra Starship
Cobra Starship is an American synthpop band created by former Midtown bassist and lead vocalist Gabe Saporta in 2003 in New York City, New York...
and Panic! at the Disco
Panic! at the Disco
Panic! at the Disco is an American alternative rock duo, formed in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2005. Since its split, the band's line-up includes Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith . Former members Ryan Ross and Jon Walker left the group in 2009...
and Paramore
Paramore
Paramore is an American rock band from Franklin, Tennessee, formed in 2004. The band consists of lead vocalist Hayley Williams, bassist Jeremy Davis, and guitarist Taylor York...
's singer Hayley Williams
Hayley Williams
Hayley Nichole Williams is an American singer, songwriter, and the lead vocalist of the band Paramore.- Life and career :...
.
The first single from the soundtrack is "New Perspective
New Perspective (song)
-Charts:...
" by Panic! at the Disco
Panic! at the Disco
Panic! at the Disco is an American alternative rock duo, formed in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2005. Since its split, the band's line-up includes Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith . Former members Ryan Ross and Jon Walker left the group in 2009...
.
The album received a 3 out of 5 review from Allmusic, who described the album as having "a slightly different spin, mixing indie with the more expected punk, emo, and metal". The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
wrote an unfavorable review of the album, stating that "This assortment of acts says nothing of its parent film, beyond the occasional reference to school days and nods to something nasty coming this way".
The ending sequence of the film itself features a song, "Violet
Violet (song)
"Violet" is a song by American alternative rock band Hole, written by vocalist and rhythm guitarist Courtney Love and lead guitarist Eric Erlandson. The song was written circa 1991, and was played at several live shows between 1991 and 1992 during Hole's Pretty on the Inside tours...
", from the album Live Through This
Live Through This
Live Through This is the second studio album by American alternative rock band Hole. It was released by Geffen Records on April 12, 1994, just four days after frontwoman Courtney Love's husband, Kurt Cobain, was found dead in their home....
by Hole
Hole (band)
Hole is an American alternative rock band that originally formed in Los Angeles in 1989. The band is fronted by vocalist/songwriter and rhythm guitarist Courtney Love, who co-founded Hole with former songwriter/lead guitarist Eric Erlandson...
. This same album also features a song entitled "Jennifer's Body". In total, the film features 22 songs, most of which are included on the soundtrack.
Track list
Home media
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 29, 2009 in the USA and Canada. In Australia, the DVD and Blu-ray was released on May 18, 2010. The film opened at #11 at the DVD sales chart, making $1.6m in the first week off 104,000 DVD units. There is a rated and an unrated version, with the unrated version running about five minutes longer than the theatrical version. The UK Blu-ray lacks most of the extras found on the locked US release.Graphic novel
As a tie-inTie-in
A tie-in is an authorized product based on a media property a company is releasing, such as a movie or video/DVD, computer game, video game, television program/television series, board game, web site, role-playing game or literary property...
to the film, Boom! Studios
Boom! Studios
BOOM! Studios is an American comic book company headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. The "BOOM!" in BOOM! Studios is always capitalized by the company.-History:BOOM! was founded June 22, 2005 with Zombie Tales #1....
produced a Jennifer's Body graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
. The novel expands on the film's universe and Jennifer's murders of the boys. It was written by Black Metal's Rick Spears
Rick Spears
Rick Spears is an American comic book writer, best known for works such as The Pirates of Coney Island and Black Metal.-Biography:Rick Spears is from Richmond, Virginia as is his main collaborator Rob G., although they did not actually meet until after they left: "[we] have lived sort of parallel...
, with the first nine pages illustrated by Jim Mahfood
Jim Mahfood
Jim Mahfood , a.k.a. Food One, is an American comic book creator.Apart from his creator-owned comic book series Grrl Scouts and his comic strip Stupid Comics he also did work for Marvel Comics on various Spider-Man titles, including Ultimate Marvel Team-Up and Spectacular...
(Clerks). Two covers, in Fox's likeness, were designed; one for the direct market by Eric Jones (available only in comic specialty stores), and the other by Frank Cho
Frank Cho
Frank Cho, born Duk Hyun Cho, is a Korean-American comic strip and comic book writer and illustrator, known for his series Liberty Meadows, as well as for books such as Shanna the She-Devil, Mighty Avengers and Hulk for Marvel Comics, and Jungle Girl for Dynamite Entertainment...
for the mass market focusing more on "hellish Jennifer stories" with art by Mahfood, Hack/Slash
HACK/slash
Hack/Slash is an ongoing comic books series, launched from several one shots of the same name, published by Image Comics ....
's Tim Seely, DMZ's Nikki Cook, and Popgun's Ming Doyle. The novel was released in August 2009.
The novel features less of Jennifer than the film, but does capture her "going in for the kill" several times. It focuses heavily on following her soon-to-be victims and provides information on their personalities not elaborated on in the film so that readers can better conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered. The novel consists of four chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, with art provided for each by different artists. Each one follows a different boy and what is happening in his life just before Jennifer kills him.
On creating the story, Spears stated, "The best part for me as a writer was to show some events from the movie from a different point of view, sort of like Rashomon
Rashomon (film)
The bandit's storyTajōmaru, a notorious brigand , claims that he tricked the samurai to step off the mountain trail with him and look at a cache of ancient swords he discovered. In the grove he tied the samurai to a tree, then brought the woman there. She initially tried to defend herself with a...
for you Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
fans. And with comics we can get into the character's heads in a way that works well in comics and novels more so than in film." He stated, "...I was using the medium to change what we really know about these characters and twist around what we see in the movies. All the academics aside, it's also very funny and gore splattered."
Spears stated that while writing the stories, the film was still being made and he had not seen any of it at the time. He mainly learned about the characters through the script. "I got to read the screenplay. It was kinda crazy writing characters that were being changed on set and in the editing process. I had to bob and weave to keep up but that was all part of the fun", he said.